Why I Reject IBLP

On IBLP’s website, under “What we do” it says, “The Institute in Basic Life Principles was established for the purpose of introducing people to the Lord Jesus Christ, and is dedicated to giving clear instruction and training on how to find success by following God’s principles found in Scripture.”

The underlined part of this purpose statement explains one of the main reasons I reject Bill Gothard’s ministry… it promotes humanism.

What? Gothard just said that his ministry was established for the purpose of introducing people to the Lord Jesus Christ and I accuse him of humanism? That’s absurd, right?

Well, it would be if he ended his statement there and if his ministry was really all about introducing people to the Jesus of the Bible, but the statement didn’t stop there (and whether or not his ministry presents a Biblical Gospel is certainly worth looking into). It’s the statement about being dedicated to giving clear instruction and training on how to find success by following God’s principles found in Scripture that causes me to cry “humanism.”

Humanism is defined as “a doctrine, attitude or way of life that centers on human interests or values.” This is at the core of why I reject IBLP.

Not that I think anything that is about human interests or ways of life is automatically “bad.” There are good things, Christian things, that are about human interests. That’s not at the core of this “humanism” of which I find IBLP to be guilty, but rather because I believe that Gothard teaches a success gospel that is centered on man rather than Christ.

Let’s look at some examples:

Scripture says that we are saved by grace through faith. Gothard defines faith as, “Visualizing what God intends to do in a given situation and acting in harmony with it.” Based on his definition, faith is something I do.

He defines grace as “the desire and ability to do God’s will” and teaches that it can be gained by humbling myself. Grace starts in me.

If we insert Gothard’s definitions into Ephesians 2:7, it says, “By the desire and ability to do God’s will (that you earn through humbling yourself) and through visualizing what God intends to do in a given situation and acting in harmony with it you are saved.”

Sound like a man-centered gospel?

How about some other examples:

What is the purpose of the law? Galatians 3:24 says, “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” What does Gothard say? Well, that’s a loaded question. Gothard really likes the Mosaic law. He teaches from it a lot. It is where he gets many of his principles that are supposed to give success. For example, he spends pages and pages of his Advanced Seminar textbook giving principles of marriage based on the Old Testament laws of cleanliness. And God’s reasons for those laws, according to Gothard? He gave these rules “to the nation of Israel so that they could be healthier, wealthier, and wiser than any other nation.” Prosperity gospel? Humanism?

This idea that the law was given to make us healthy, wealthy, and wise is seen throughout Gothard’s teachings. At the Basic Seminar, I remember being told that fasting is for our physical benefit. He said that when God sent manna in the wilderness, His reason for not sending it on the Sabbath was to encourage fasting. The truth is that God did an extra miracle to make a provision for eating manna on the Sabbath without breaking the Sabbath with work, but Gothard ignores that and teaches that people would do good by fasting on Sunday.

He teaches that we should meditate on Scripture so that we will have success. He goes so far as to state that this success will cause you to have higher grades. You can see this promoted on the IBLP website. One of the Board Members, Dr. Billy Boring, Jr., has this testimony. “As a medical student at the University of Texas Medical School, Billy attended a Basic Seminar, where he was challenged to begin meditating on God’s Word. As he did so, his grades began to climb.” Notice the cause and effect? Meditate on Scripture = higher grades.

Yes, Joshua 1:7 does say that success will be the result of meditating on Scripture. But is Biblical success higher grades in medical school? Is God really promising us success in this world? If I meditate on Scripture, will every business venture I begin automatically succeed? Isn’t this another version of the Prosperity Gospel? Do you need more examples?

I don’t know how many times during my years in AT I I heard that we are to do good works in such a way that “God gets the glory, your authorities get the credit, and you get the eternal reward.” Sounds good. But Scripture says, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good words and glorify your Father in heaven.” Hmmm … God’s Word says to do good works in a way that God gets the glory. Period. See the subtle difference? The message of Scripture is that everything is for God’s glory. Everything.

The message of Scripture isn’t about how to find hidden principles that give man success. And that’s why I find Gothard’s system full of humanism. It’s why I reject it.

I want to quote Matt Chandler in The Explicit Gospel to show what I mean.

“There are essentially two ways to view the Scriptures. One way is to view them primarily as a guidebook for our daily living. We have questions. Surely the Bible is a reliable reference book. So we ask, should we drink alcohol? Well, let’s find that in the Bible. We ask, should I go see this movie or not? And we look up some texts about not eating meat sacrificed to idols and end up slightly more confused but feeling religious, at least. Suddenly we’ve turned the Bible in our Magic 8-ball. Of course, we don’t call it that. We call it things like ‘the road map of life’.”

“Now, does the Bible contain a wealth of wisdom for practical, daily living? Yes, absolutely. Is it going to specifically answer every question you’ve got? Not by a long shot. And on top of that, answering our practical questions isn’t the point of the Bible …”

“Here’s my point: what if the Bible isn’t about us at all? What if we aren’t the story of God’s revelation?”

“The Bible definitely issues commands for us to obey and makes demands for our submission. But, in the end, reading the Bible as the Daily Manual for My Life is the deficient way of the basic ways available to us. We can read is as a reference book about us. Or we can see that the Bible is a book about God. To paraphrase Herbert Lockyer, the Bible is for us, but it’s not about us.”

That is how Gothard hurt me personally. That is why I reject his teachings. He gave me a theology that had me as the center of the Bible. He made the Bible about me. His “hidden” meanings and reasons and principles of Scripture make it about me and temporal success for man becomes the message of the Bible. In all of that success and all of the principles, I lost the centrality of Jesus. So, regardless of what good there might be, his teachings cost me Jesus. That’s why I reject him. And that’s why I say it’s humanism.

All articles on this site reflect the views of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of other Recovering Grace contributors or the leadership of the site. Students who have survived Gothardism tend to end up at a wide variety of places on the spiritual and theological spectrum, thus the diversity of opinions expressed on this website reflects that. For our official statement of beliefs, click here.

About the author

Ileata was in ATI for 7 years. Though she started having some concerns with the program before, it was while she was living on the missionfield that she realized the "little red book" didn't have all the answers she thought it did. In 2005, she married her best friend, Samuel, and together they are learning what God's grace really is and how to live the Christian life by following Jesus daily rather than following legalistic "principles". They live in Texas with their three young sons.

19 Comments

This really resonates with me. I had been in ATI for 9 years when I finally realized that Christianity wasn't all about me, but rather, about Christ. This realization completely revolutionized my relationship with God. . .and it is something I was never taught by IBLP.

Like many other neo-Calvinists, however, Matt Chlandler believes that God receives glory by condemning people to hell with no chance of being saved. After I spent 3 months crying every day as I was recovering from Gothardism, I got trapped in another 3 months of crying every day because one of my pastors was influencing me with his belief in "limited atonement," the doctrine that God didn't die for everyone's sins, just those of the "elect." It was hard to reject it because its proponents include such highly intelligent people as Matt and John Piper and Mark Driscoll.

The ironic thing to me is that he (my worship pastor) "escaped" (his word) from ATI after being homeschooled with that curriculum for years, but then he went straight into the highly-authoritarian system of neo-Calvinism!

I would caution people leaving Gothardism to understand that neo-Calvinism is very similar to patriarchy in many ways (example: extreme submissiveness, women not even being allow to read scripture in church), and in my opinion it's just as dangerous to some of us as Gothardism was.. We don't need more bondage, we need freedom!

Speaking as a "neo-Calvanist" myself, and as someone who subscribes to that particular flavor of theology for no reason other than my absolute inability to dodge the logical conclusions of Romans 9, I caution you against insinuating that those of us who seek to glorify God by emphasizing His sovereignty are somehow "dangerous" to a believer's sense of freedom in Christ.

As I understand it, my liberty from the bondage of the law is predicated entirely upon my status as a fellow heir of God with Christ (Rom. 8:14-17), a status bestowed upon me through absolutely no merit of my own whatsoever (Eph. 2:8-9). Therefore, since it is through God's grace alone that I stand cleansed and righteous before the throne of judgement, there's nothing I can do - or fail to do - to nullify His favor. I don't have to obey His commands or follow a set of principles or perform penance for my sins. Because Christ Himself drained to the dregs the brimming cup of God's righteous wrath against all my transgressions, I've been granted true freedom: the freedom from obligation. And, since obligation is always driven by fear, its abolishment allows me to truly love my savior (1st John 4:18-19).

Now, if I believe that salvation is entirely God's doing (i.e. that it's a transformative, supernatural work of the Holy Spirit), then that premise may lead me to a few logical conclusions (that those who die in their sins were never called by God in the first place, that God is glorified equally well by both His justice and His mercy, that a god who could be thwarted in any way would not be all-powerful, etc.) collectively labelled "neo-Calvinism." This is not to say that those Christians such as yourself who reject a belief in predestination are somehow dangerously deceived. I'm not so arrogant as to condemn a whole swath of Christendom which believes in the exact same Jesus who saved me, but which differs from me in how it approaches peripheral theology.

All I'm trying to do here is to point out what truly matters: the gospel, pure and simple. All of us - Calvinists, Arminians, and all other Christians - should be able to rally around the fact that we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. As long as we get that much right, we'll never become a danger to the freedom we've been gifted.

Austin, I would encourage you to take a look at the chapter through context. Not to change your beliefs but just this chapter contextualized properly. Romans 9 is a prelude to understanding chapter 11. It is in regards to nations, not individuals. Notice Israel is cut off in part, (nation) yet their is still Paul (Individual). All through the Old Testament their is a difference in the nation of Israel and the individual responsibility toward God. This is where Gothard gets a lot of twisted "principals". His use of Duet 20:5 is a good example. Something for nations and even a contrast between his wrath and mercy is shown. Gothard takes it and makes it an absolute dna issue on an individual level that will follow the generations no matter how great or trivial the sin(not that we can fathom that). Then of course this is only regards to not understanding scripture in context, void of what His blood does for us and what it means that the children of the believer is sanctified.(Paul's words, not mine).

I don't think either of us wants to wade into the sticky mires of the Predestination Debate (an exchange I usually find to be both frustrating and fruitless), but I feel compelled to both agree and disagree with your comment. I absolutely agree with you that it's very bad exegesis indeed to apply corporate-level Scripture passages to individuals. We both agree that this is one of Gothard's bad habits. But, in regard to Romans 9, Paul gives three examples of predestination: Jacob and Esau (Rom. 9:10-13), Pharaoh (Rom. 9:17-18), and us (Rom. 9:22-24). All three examples are of specific individuals. So I'm not convinced that your challenge is applicable in this particular instance.

RabbiAugust 6, 2012

Austin,

Thank you. First and formost, this is my second post here so I want to state just incase a reader sees this post: I validate the spiritual, mental and physical abuse that those involved with this tragic road have endured. It has taken a lot of research and time for me being an outsider to understand the definitions and name brands involved. Their is nothing wrong with you and their is nothing wrong with resting in Jesus, accepting you have been damaged, accepting help from counselors. Forgiving does not have to be connected to healing. Their is no such thing as moving on. Each incident in our lives is a puzzle piece, not a moment or a day, but a permanently fixed part of our internal geography. Jesus redeems all things. When a sheep has a brocken leg, the shepard carries it around on His shoulders till it heals. From that day forward that sheep follows closer than the rest.

Back to Romans 9, I agree it would be fruitless unless I won the debate. ;)

Ileata is my wife, and we met on a discussion thread over the topic of predestination and Romans 9. The lingering question for me is: Did God predestinate us to meet in a discussion over predestination?

As far as humanism goes, I agree 100% that the Gothard system is humanistic at its core. Otherwise, why emphasize the human element as the kingpin of spiritual success or failure?

The worship of the redeemed is the song of the "worth of Jesus Christ" yielded up by the saints. We are nobody in ourselves, made holy by the cleansing of Jesus' blood, and growing in sanctification by His power. We do not depend on flimsy systems of passing tests in order to receive or earn increasing dosages of the Holy Spirit as Gothard teaches.

Very well said - thank you! I too believe these teachings need to be exposed and rejected - they're too laced with humanism to be redeemed. Any "good" teaching of ATI can be found elsewhere without the accompanying legalism.

I am not an insider to the Reformed crowd of Matt Chandler, though I do respect the way he faced his cancer. Regardless, each of those quotes are right on and I think will be helpful to others in the future as they weigh the theology of Gothardism versus the gospel.

The first quote from Chandler really grabbed my attention. What is Gothardism but a guidebook approach to the Bible? Chandler wasn't even writing about Gothardism, he was writing about the gospel. But there it is, a powerful rebuke to Gothardism as a side effect.

This is how Bockelman described that approach back in the 70s: As a matter of fact, Gothard insists that for every problem in life there is a particular Scripture passage that offers the solution. For him the Bible is essentially an answer book — a verse here to answer this problem, a verse there to answer that. So the more Scripture passages you learn, the more problems you can answer. A favorite approach of Gothard's is to state a problem, then ask, "You know what the answer is?" and then quote a Bible passage to dispose of the matter. Such use of Scripture, it seems to me, reduces it to a kind of book of magic.

I think you've put your finger on the pulse of one of the core problems with the entire approach.

Wow, its been a long time since I've seen a discussion of free will vs predestination!

The ABSOLUTE, INESCAPABLE, BIBLICAL FACT, is that a clear reading of the Bible demonstrates conclusively that, A. We have free will, and B. God is sovereign and knows what we will choose.

So in other words, BOTH FREE WILL AND PREDESTINATION IS RIGHT! But how you say, they are opposites?

If you truly believe in the Bible, and believe in biblical prophecy, you have to recognize that God is OUTSIDE of our physical 3 dimensional+time space/time continuum. To God, time isn't a moving line of the present, past history, and unknowable future. He sees it all, from outside of time.

Modern physics have proven not only that time is a physical attribute and can be effected, but also that extra dimensions are theoretically possible. If you study it, and actually think about the Bible from that point of view the "supernatural" all of a sudden makes sense.

So in a nut shell, we DO have free will, we DO choose, God just knows what we will choose, because he sees the future. Neo-calvinists often, if not usually make the mistake of letting that fact change how they live. But how God sees us and our timeframe, is his business. Our job is to live our life the way he calls us to, and not worry about who is "called", and who isn't. This leads to the exact same elitest mindset that Jesus so roundly comdemned in the Jewish religious leaders of the day.

We are still called to witness, we are still called to love. It's lazy and not right to think "oh, if they are "called" to God, they will come, what's the point of witnessing." Which is a common side-effect of calvinism.

"...in the end, reading the Bible as the Daily Manual for My Life is the deficient way of the basic ways available to us. We can read it as a reference book about us. Or we can see that the Bible is a book about God. To paraphrase Herbert Lockyer, the Bible is for us, but it’s not about us.”

I don't know who the guys are that are quoted, and I don't really care. For so long I too saw the Bible as a self-help manual, and it's easy to fall into promoting it and Christianity that way. "Do this because it will make your life better. You DO want to succeed in life, don't you?"

Problem is, the Christian life doesn't work that way. I memorized Matthew 5,6, & 7, and noticed no difference in my grades, except that in ATI, I never learned how to write and flunked the writing portion of the GED. I honestly believed that if I memorized Romans 6, 7, & 8 (9 was not recommended, sorry), my bad habits would somehow evaporate. No good. I still struggle with the same bad habits those chapters were supposed to free me from, according to the Seminar. People who have done the Biblical diet thing have still come down with cancer and other diseases. Trust Christ, and you might lose your job, total your car, and have other "random" things happen to you that you just never see good coming out of.

In fact, the older I get the more I notice a scary thing: Why is it that the mature Christians who have suffered the most for Christ always seem to get slammed the hardest by life's hardships? And not just once, but again and again and again. To the point that you cry, "Please God, no more! Why them?" You don't have to look past the Apostle Paul's beatings, shipwreck and prison letters to see it's always been the case. (And then to top it all off, he got beheaded.) So, if the goal of following Biblical teaching is finding success, it's not working, right?

Or what if it's all about God all along? What if He wants us to come to the Bible, not for the health benefits we'll get out of it, or the stresses and bad habits it will cure, or even to know how to live our lives, but to discover who He is and simply enjoy Him? What if THAT is the purpose of the Bible?

I still memorize Scripture, but now it's for the joy of discovering more what it's all about. God and Christ keep shining through in ways I hadn't seen before. It's NOT about me, and it never was. It's about Him, and His gently drawing me deeper and deeper into resting in Him, no matter how many rock bottoms I may hit.

It's all about Him, not me and what I want to get out of it. Well put, Ileata.

Want to Donate?

Want to donate to the Recovering Grace ministry? Do all of your Amazon shopping using the link below, and a small percentage comes back to us. Or you can donate directly via paypal to finance@recoveringgrace.org. Note: Recovering Grace is not a 501(c)3, and thus gifts are not tax-deductible.